British Town Worried About WWII Ammo Ship Wreck 471
Radical Rad writes "For 60 years, 1.4 kilotons of unstable world war II bombs have lain in the rusting wreck of a US cargo ship half-submerged on a sandbank in the river Thames. If it explodes it will be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud, water, and metal fragments causing devastation to the nearby town of Sheerness in Kent." The BBC has more.
Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
Coolest Thing Ever (Score:5, Funny)
But WAIT!!!!you're telling me that a large abandoned ship full of explosives existed exposed to the outside world for sixty some years and it WASN'T looted by hordes of pyro teenagers? There must be something fundamentally wrong with the teenagers across that ocean. Methinks not enough good ol american made rednek would fix it right up.
GITTERDUN!!!!!!!!
The only good thing to happen on Sheppey (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it might be a blessing if it did happen.
If you want to know more about the dubious joys of living on the isle of Sheppey (on which Sheerness is located) then you can find out at the most excellent Isle of Sheppey tourists guide. [sheppeyscum.com]
Well done, mods (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Phew! (Score:5, Informative)
Does that sentence make anyone elses head hurt? Of course it has occured. That may have been a big explosion, but this would then suplant that as being the largest. The thing about being the biggest/largest/tallest/longest etc of something, is that you only keep the title as long as nothing else comes along and surpasses you.
I thought that the explosion along the Siberian pipeline was the largest non-nuclear anyways.
Re:Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
Not in Texas...
Re:Phew! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Phew! (Score:5, Informative)
The destruction of ripple rock to clear a safe passage for shipping holds that title. 1375 tons of explosives going off about 10 feet underwater. It rattled windows 65 miles away. There's an article here [vancouveri...abound.com].
Re:Phew! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it was a volcano eruption.
Next time, be sure to say it's the largest man-made non-nuclear that-has-yet-to-occur type of explosion.
In any case, shouldn't those explosive materials start to decay after some time. I'm not saying that they can't explode, but at least I would expect the explosion to be a fraction of what it might have been fifty years ago.
Re:Halifax - Non metric (Score:4, Interesting)
Wet picric acid 1,602,519 kg
Dry picric acid 544,311 kg
Guncotton[?] 56,301 kg
Benzol 223,188 kg
Since 1000 KG is about 1 ton
TNT 226 Tons
Wet Picric Acid 1602 Tons
Dry
Guncotton (nitrate of cellulose) 56 Tons
Benzol 223 Tons
Or 2651 Tons of explosives, very approx.
Of course TNT is not as powerful then the others listed but it was one hell of a blast. They did a survey of the harbour that proved that the long standing story that a crater existed in the harbour was not true.
http://gsca.nrcan.gc.ca/pubprod/of3154/showimg_
Other Links
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mma/AtoZ/halexpl.h
What are the odds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What are the odds? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What are the odds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unstable is the word you're looking for.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently, many types of explosives become unstable as they age, meaning that an explosion becomes more likely over time.
http://safety.utoledo.edu/explosives.asp
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think the town should be evacuated, all the windows boarded up, shipping traffic diverted - and a torpedo lobbed at it from a couple of miles away to set the entire thing off and ensure it's made safe. I wouldn't want to ask anyone to go down there to try and defuse anything - it seems far too risky.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, when I got back from my sailing weekend I did a little research on SS Richard Montgomery [ukdiving.co.uk]. The history is that the ship ran aground at neap tide. Troops were busy unloading the ordnance when the ship started breaking up. Further unloading deemed too dangerous. Incidently in later years an oil refinery was built nearby on the Isle of Grain, probably closer than the town Sheerness.
To quote from one of the articles I found in my research -
Of the three and a half thousand tons of explosives left, most contain TNT and are impervious to seawater. It is highly probable that their fuses have long since deteriorated and would therefore need something else to set them off. Unfortunately on the deck above these are approximately one hundred and seventy five tons of fragmentation cluster bombs fully armed and ready to go. These are considered to be the main danger, because if the decking collapses these bombs could fall on top of the others and set the whole thing off.
So it doesn't seem like the fuses are the problem, but the cluster bombs could possibly set off the TNT.
Regarding cluster-bombs . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Cluster bombs based on a spring-loaded collection of small bomblets were used for delivering both HE and incendiary charges in WW2.
I live in a dutch town (Nijmegen) that was destroyed by US bombers, partially using cluster-bombs, in August 1944. Over 800 Dutch were killed and zero Germans. The attack was an accident when several aircraft could not find their primary target in the industrialised area of Germany. The resulting fires attracted other 'geographically-embarassed' aircraft....
I'm certainly glad I don't live in Sheerness though !
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something called "Composition A" is RDX [fact-index.com] mixed with melted wax. That stuff will keep for a LONG time, since no water is going to penetrate the wax.
RDX has been used as an explosive since the 1920s. It's some powerful stuff.
Remember Saving Private Ryan? Remember the "sticky bombs"? That was Composition A. You can blow the treads off of a tank with a sock full of the stuff. Imagine what a boatload of it will do.
We're not talking small quantities of these explosives either, we're talking about a military transport ship.
That could be dangerous, but nothing compared to the Lost Hydrogen Bomb [charleston.net] that is sitting in the atlantic just off the coast of the US.
War is nasty business.
LK
Re:What are the odds? (Score:3, Informative)
Story on lost hydrogen bomb presents no threat to national security
BY ELSA MCDOWELL
Public Editor
In 1958, a damaged U.S. Air Force bomber dropped a hydrogen bomb in a sound about 20 miles from downtown Savannah after the bomber collided with a fighter plane.
The Air Force searched for the unexploded bomb for a few months and declared it lost.
Now, two men believe they have located the bomb under the mud in shallow waters near Tybee Island and are an
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Informative)
That's, of course, only the case for explosives which use nitroglycerine.
As this is WWII ordnance, we're probably not looking at any of those. Could be straight TNT, which is extremely stable, but various alkali compounds of the sort found in seawater can react with it to form a variety of compounds that are unstable to heat and impact. Could be Composition B, which is a mixture of TNT and RDX, so the same thing applies, or Comp A, which is straight RDX and a plasticizer, not so stable as Comp B. Ammonium picrate was used as a bursting charge, and is incredibly stable to shock and friction, but, again, seawater. Could also be Torpex, another popular one, and another RDX/TNT mixture. Problem with all of these is primarily the seawater environment reacting with the TNT to produce unstable products.
Nitrocellulose wasn't used in any of the common WWII high-explosives, nor was nitroglycerin; most high explosives of the day were varying mixtures of TNT, RDX, and sometimes PETN or Tetryl. Nitrocellulose isn't a high explosive at all; it doesn't detonate, it deflagrates, and the propagation of the chemical reaction through the material is below the speed of sound. What it was for, up until and probably throughout WWII, was a propellant, a replacement for gunpowder. It only explodes at all when confined; flash paper is basically straight nitrocellulose, and you can light that stuff off while holding it in your hand.
Its possibly 'Amatol' (Score:3, Interesting)
Amatol is an increased yield mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate which can range from an 80/20 to a 50/50 mix.
In its manufactured for it is supposedly relatively stable but severe impact can be a trigger.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Informative)
Only in the sense that most high explosives are nitrogen compounds. Most WWII bombs did not, in fact, use nitroglycerin, or explosives based upon nitroglycerin. Go look it up, I'll wait.
Torpex is RDX, TNT, and powdered aluminum. Tetrytol is Tetryl and TNT. Picratol is picric acid and TNT. Pentolite is PETN and TNT. Octol is HMX and TNT. Minol is TNT, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum. Amitol is TNT and ammonion nitrate. Comp A is RDX and a plasticizer. Comb B is TNT, RDX, and wax. Baronol is TNT, barium nitrate, and aluminum powder. The PTX family is RDX, tetryl or PETN, and TNT.
Those are the major explosives used during WWII. Not a single one has nitoglycerin in it.
As for Nitrocellulose only exploding when confined. What do you think a bomb casing is, if not confinement?
There is a tremendous difference between an explosive and a high explosive. Even black powder will explode when confined, but black powder never, ever detonates. You can make a pipe bomb out of match heads, but nobody who knows anything would describe matches as a high explosive. High explosives detonate, meaning that the reaction front propagates through the material supersonically. Low-order explosives don't do that, they simply deflagrate, burn rapidly. Nobody in their right mind would use a low-order explosive like nitrocellulose in a bomb, not when anything more suitable was available.
I repeat: neither nitroglycerin nor nitrocellulose were routinely used as bomb fill in WWII. I won't rule out some Yugoslavian partisan group maybe mixing up some guncotton and using it in makeshift mortars, but that's about all it would have been used for.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Informative)
TNT is trinitrotoluene, otherwise known as C6H2(NO2)3CH3, or 2,4,6-trinitromethylbenzene.
Nitroglycerine is otherwise known as C3H5N3O9, or 1,2,3-Tris-nitrooxy-propane.
Nitroglycerine is prepared by nitrating glycerine. TNT is prepared by nitrating toluene. They are two very different molecules, with very different properties.
I fucking love when people repeat as truth completely inaccurate information, without even the merest thought they might be spouting bullshit. I swear, some days I'm not sure whether I'm reading Slashdot or Fark.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:4, Informative)
Please gove more precise details (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Please gove more precise details (Score:3, Funny)
And from the wiki:
Named after Richard Montgomery, a celebrated Irish-American soldier of the 18th Century, who was born in Dublin in 1738, elected to congress and later fought against the British in Canada, only to be killed in the assault on Quebec in 1775.
He'll get his revenge yet...
John
Idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Idea... (Score:5, Funny)
If I remember rightly, they have also left it there rather than disturb it and possibly set it off.
The thought of a huge mud flinging explosion is also somewhat reminiscant of the rotting whale carcass [hackstadt.com] left on the beach.
They decided to use 1/2 a tonne of dynamite, and in the reports words:
"the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."
quality engineering (Score:5, Funny)
yep, they just dont build things the way they used to
Re: quality engineering (Score:5, Funny)
> i cant think of too many things designed these days that would survive 60+ years of being exposed to the elements, especially buried in a sand bank underwater... and then would still work close to specifications...
FWIW, about a decade ago a fishing boat offshore from my home town drew up a honking big WWII bomb. The Coast Guard decided that popping it was the safest solution, which they did in an empty praire reachable by an inland waterway. Everyone for miles around felt their windows rattle, and no one knew what it was until the news carried the story later.
A friend says when he was a kid a fisherman / WWII vet had another big bomb hanging in his garage across the street from where he lived, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Never figured out whether it was live or not...
Re:quality engineering (Score:4, Funny)
True, but do remember that a bomb basically has one thing to do and only has to do it once. It's not as though it has lots of moving parts constantly wearing and requiring service...
Want something more impressive? 50,000-year-old paleolithic stone hammers that still work like the day they were new. Now that's quality construction.
Re:quality engineering (Score:5, Informative)
The Liberty ships were designed with one goal in mind: build ships faster than the German Uboat force could sink them. And they succeeded! The Liberty ships were assembled (from pre-manufractured components) by mostly unskilled labour on the shipyards of Henry J. Kaiser within only 80 hours! On these shipyards, 140 Liberty ships per month would be completed.
The Liberty ships were never built to last. Their quality was rather poor. Definately not up to todays standards in shipbuilding.
Re:quality engineering (Score:3, Informative)
Kris
Lets Hear it for Procrastination!! (Score:5, Informative)
She said the last examination, in 2003, showed the site to be no more dangerous than in the past.
Alright, according to the article the bombs could detonate at any point spontaneously, but the risk hasn't changed from the past,
Re:Lets Hear it for Procrastination!! (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. If you know it hasn't blown up yet, then the probability of it happening now (or in the next T time) hasn't increased. However the probability of it happening in the next T time tends to 1 when T grows.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, do you need a job? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Umm, do you need a job?-YES! (Score:3, Funny)
Like Stumpy, Peg-leg, Ol' one-eye...
Re:gross negligence (Score:4, Funny)
- Kill remaining bad guys from losing regime.
- Redraw map, divide spoils.
- Put out things actually currently on fire.
- Feed starving masses.
- Rattle sabres about map/spoils.
- Rebuild railroads, road systems, power, and plumbing.
- If some major internal industry is of economic interest to the victors, rebuild that, too.
The short and direct answer to your question is because we couldn't tow it to Bikini.(Which step we are on in Iraq is left as an exercise for the reader)
Paraphrasing (Score:5, Informative)
According to the linked BBC piece, the wave caused by a potential explosion would not be 3km high, it would be 16ft high. The New Scientist makes mention of a 3000m column of debris: that is material would reach a maximum height of 3km. This is entirely different from a tsunami-like wave baselessly alluded to by the Slashdot blurb.
Re:Paraphrasing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paraphrasing (Score:3, Funny)
First is a probable yes.. second a definite yes.
Largest free world non-nuke was 4.8 KTons ANFO (Score:5, Informative)
As a participent/observer, I can attest that (ignoring some misc. issues), it blow'ed up real good! ;-)
Re:Largest free world non-nuke was 4.8 KTons ANFO (Score:4, Funny)
and if it is an excuse to blow shit up... (Score:4, Funny)
Does 5,035 tons of ammunition beat that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Shameless lifted from Some random page about the Port of Chicago [navy.mil] explosion.
On the evening of 17 July 1944, the empty merchant ship SS Quinault Victory was prepared for loading on her maiden voyage. The SS E.A. Bryan, another merchant ship, had just returned from her first voyage and was loading across the platform from Quinault Victory. The holds were packed with high explosive and incendiary bombs, depth charges, and ammunition - 4,606 tons of ammunition in all. There were sixteen rail cars on the pier with another 429 tons. Working in the area were 320 cargo handlers, crewmen and sailors.
At 10:18 p.m., a hollow ring and the sound of splintering wood erupted from the pier, followed by an explosion that ripped apart the night sky. Witnesses said that a brilliant white flash shot into the air, accompanied by a loud, sharp report. A column of smoke billowed from the pier, and fire glowed orange and yellow. Flashing like fireworks, smaller explosions went off in the cloud as it rose. Within six seconds, a deeper explosion erupted as the contents of the E.A. Bryan detonated in one massive explosion. The seismic shock wave was felt as far away as Boulder City, Nevada. The E.A. Bryan and the structures around the pier were completely disintegrated. A pillar of fire and smoke stretched over two miles into the sky above Port Chicago. The largest remaining pieces of the 7,200-ton ship were the size of a suitcase. A plane flying at 9,000 feet reported seeing chunks of white hot metal "as big as a house" flying past. The shattered Quinault Victory was spun into the air. Witnesses reported seeing a 200-foot column on which rode the bow of the ship, its mast still attached. Its remains crashed back into the bay 500 feet away.
All 320 men on duty that night were killed instantly. The blast smashed buildings and rail cars near the pier and damaged every building in Port Chicago. People on the base and in town were sent flying or were sprayed with splinters of glass and other debris. The air filled with the sharp cracks and dull thuds of smouldering metal and unexploded shells as they showered back to earth as far as two miles away. The blast caused damage 48 miles across the Bay in San Francisco.
Re:Does 5,035 tons of ammunition beat that? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does 5,035 tons of ammunition beat that? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nps.gov/poch/index.htm
A pretty big deal actually was made of the explosion; there was a full board of inquiry and it did result in some procedural changes to the way ammunition was handled, as well as the reduction, still in 1944, of the number of blacks at ammunition depots reduced to 30% of staff. At Port Chicago, all of the loaders were black, only the officers were white.
Shamefully, the handful loaders who survived were court-martialed for mutiny because they refused to load ammunition until safety changes were made. While they were released from prison in 1946, well short of the long sentences they were given, that doesn't change the wrong that was done to them.
More info on Port Chicago is here:
http://www.usmm.org/portchicago.html
Re:Largest free world non-nuke was 4.8 KTons ANFO (Score:3, Funny)
And the largest non-nuclear explosion in the non-free world was when 1.2 Billion Chinese all jumped simultaneously.
-
These people are missing the point. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:These people are missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should mention that, because it's exactly what they did in Canberra when the Government decided to implode the old Canberra Hospital. They touted it as a big tourist event... you know, come out and see us blow shit up.
Something went wrong. I think some twit decided to put some barrels of diesel in there for a bigger spectacle. Maybe someone else got the calculations wrong, but debris rained down on the crowd [google.com], some of it very big. Unbelievably, only one person was killed - which is a tragedy, but it had the potential to be a lot more.
-- james
Canberra hospital demolition (Score:4, Interesting)
The contractor found that the structural columns were not as described on the blueprints, but in fact contained a lot more steel. The cuting charges required for this type of steel were not available in the country and would need to be specially imported (you can't just stick HE on a ship or airplane). Since the contractor was working to a contract that included fairly strong late penalties, he improvised something that was quite a bit faster than the proper cutting charges. Unfortunately the sandbags that were placed around the charges did not prevent large chunks of shrapnel from being launched. A young girl (12 or so) was struck by a piece and killed.
I went to watch the blast, but from a much longer distance than most other folk (and I made sure there was a large hill between me and the base of the hospital). I was surprised at how close people were, and I was also surprised that more people were not injured.
Xix.
Halifax Explosion Munitions Ship Explosion (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1917 250 tons of explosive gun powder, benzol, and gun cotton loaded on the French ship Mont-Blanc exploded and devastated the town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship was carrying supplies to help the war effort over seas. A fire resulting from a collision with a Norwegian ship as the Mont-Blanc was leaving the harbor to join up with a convoy was triggered the blast 28 minutes after the minor collision.
The death toll rose to about 1,600 in a city with a population near 50,000. An explosion 5 times as powerful in a town 5 times smaller could conceivably wipe it off the face of the earth. 12,000 homes were damaged or destroyed not only by the blast, but also the fires that followed.
Wikipedia has some more information [wikipedia.org] on the Halifax explosion.
Re:Halifax Explosion Munitions Ship Explosion (Score:4, Informative)
The Richard Montgomery is 2Km+ from Sheerness and 10Km+ from Southend-on-Sea [locally referred to as "Southend-on-Mud"] the other side of the estuary.
Furthermore the wreck is underwater (!!) which is going to substantially reduce the flying debris and airbourne shockwave ... the exact effects depending on the tides. Southend's tidal range is about 5-6m so I would expect it to be similar on the other side of the estuary.
Amount of explosives wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Halifax Explosion Munitions Ship Explosion (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch. That had to hurt.
Personally, I probably would put the flaming people out after a day or two.
Three days.. tops.
How about a controlled explosion? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gilligan? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong post (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1970, government tests on the site showed a
blast would hurl a 1,000ft wide column of water,
mud, metal and munitions almost 10,000ft into
the air.
The shock of the blast would shatter almost
every window in Sheerness and damage buildings.
The explosion would also generate a 16ft high
wave that could sink a small craft.
#/text#
where did poster get the "with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud"????
Re:Wrong post (Score:3, Informative)
We don't have the technology to generate a nearly 2 mile high wave, accidentally or otherwise. That's greater than earthquake generated tsunami, it would probably take an asteroid strike in deep ocean to create that.
Having said that, 16ft would be enough to cause a compete disaster to the town. There is no need to exaggerate.
New Scientist source article (Score:5, Informative)
Ah... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a shame... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's a shame... (Score:5, Funny)
(Ha! Take that all you Brits who think all us Yanks are uncultured swine! A topical British cultural reference from an American! On behalf of my countrymen, Neener neener neener!)
Re:It's a shame... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's a shame... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm never sure whether it's because he failed, or because he tried :-)
Still, who cares- it's a party and we get fireworks!
More about Sheppey, the island in question (Score:4, Informative)
(Note: site doesn't appear to work well in Firefox)
I have the solution! (Score:3, Informative)
Move.
You're welcome!
UXO (Score:5, Interesting)
However, in France, the incidence of UXO is sufficiently high that local farmers plow up "items" on a regular basis. If they are small enough to be moved by an individual, they are taken out by hand and put in drop boxes by the road for ordnance techs to deal with. That's how common they are- farmers turned ordnance technicians.
While working on a test program with some British ordnance people, a story was related to me regarding buried UXO from WWII. Pipes were filled with nitroglycerin (NG), and buried perpendicular to landing strips in the UK. The idea was that they could be detonated in the event of invasion, rendering the landing strips useless. They were forgotten after WWII, and during construction some decades later, were re-discovered when a pipe containing NG was struck with a backhoe; I believe it killed the operator.
Making things worse during the remediation effort was that apartments had been built over part of the old runway. The Brits paid to bus the residents to the beach each day, and then bring them back in the afternoon after work for the day had halted. Evidently, they became quite cross when the work was finished a day early and everyone lined up for the buses, and the buses didn't come that day.
Anyway- the only thing worse than UXO is unexploded, toxic ordnance. [toosvanholstein.nl] Chemical warfare just hasn't been the same since the Chinese invented burning pepper upwind of the enemy, I'll tell ya.
Re:UXO (Score:3, Informative)
Re:UXO (Score:3, Informative)
There is, however, a considerable amount of UXO in the coastal waters of the US, remnants of U-boats brought down. Any good navigational chart of New York Harbor, for instance, has many sites marked as "unexploded ordinance" or "sunken U-boat". To be fair, I believe the total tonnage is still way lower than the Brits or French (or, I suspect, Ge
Re: UXO, not in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps that's part of why the US _isn't_ one of the 152 countries that have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (effectively a landmine ban)
Re: UXO, not in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The reason is that the US uses landmines to defend the border between North Korea and South Korea. Its easy for those 152 countries to claim that landmines are unecessary when they don't have 30,000 men and women standing in the way of 1,000,000 mental communists.
Re:Landmines and Static Defenses at 38th parallel (Score:4, Insightful)
You're talking about using up lots of prisoners, and vehicles aren't practical except for clearning road-sized passages.
The whole point of a minefield is to really slow down the enemy. If you send 1000 prisoners into a field, one will trip a mine, which will probably kill at least a few dozen of them (many launch grenades high into the air), and the mine 10 feet away will still be active. How do you get all those prisoners to the border in the first place.
What a minefield does is make your enemy either put millions of people on the border simply so that they can absorb HUGE losses, or use mineclearing techniques, which funnel their troops through narrow corridors which can be more easily defended.
You can't park millions of troops on a border for years at a time - it costs a fortune and they aren't occupied in useful work. So, if the N Koreans started moving that many troops to the border, the US would quickly reinforce its lines.
Also, if you send prisoners across the minefields, they won't set off anti-tank mines - just anti-personnel mines. So at best the enemy can get lots of poorly-armed and unsupported troops over the border. That isn't much use in a war - you need a well-reinforced army with armored support to be effective.
Minefields are very effective. They're basically like $10 smart-bombs - every detonation is a perfect hit. They force the enemy to slow down, buying you time to reinforce.
And the mines that the US uses are well mapped, and are designed to disable themselves after some amount of time. I'm sure this isn't perfect, but there are no perfect solutions when you have a country ruled by a dictator on your border. The normal rules of diplomacy don't really apply - the behavior of a single person is not that easy to control...
Re:UXO (Score:3, Informative)
There are problems occasionally when those bases are closed and used for other purposes, military or non. Here in Kitsap County a large tract of military housing, a school, and the Naval Hospital were built on the site of a former ammunition facility. They still find the odd bit of ordinance or poke int
Re:Nukes do not worry you ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Get the RIAA involved (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Get the RIAA involved (Score:3, Funny)
And just to be safe, have a plane fly overhead and drop a flare.
There's a lot more bombs left (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me it would be good thing to develop a nano or microbial solution (don't they have mushrooms that eat High Explosives or was that diesel?).
A more modern version... er sorta (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway. That's not the best part. A few years ago they were doing some construction in the area when a backhoe hit something... something metal.
Oops.
Well, they called out the bomb squad, who said 'fsck it!' and called the military, who decided to blow the thing in place. Many windows in the area gave their lives.
After that they used ground penetrating radar in the area and declared the area "cleared".
End of story? Nope.
A week later "tink"... a backhoe hit something... something metal. It seems that, and this is just priceless, when they did the ground penetrating radar passes, they only went for POSITIVE matches, i.e.: it had to look like a bomb on radar. Well, come on, the area is littered with shrapnel and train debris even 30 years later.
After much flogging, they did more radar and found not 1... not 2... but EIGHT 250-lbs bombs in the immediate area.
Anyway, I hear houses in the area can be had cheap
Emulation of nuclear explosions (Score:3, Interesting)
*Yawn* WWII bombs (Score:3, Interesting)
now having a 1400t bomb in the middle of Berlin, that would be something. But actually we had that around 60 years ago in several German towns, sort of, so no big news either.
Would this work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Only drawback I can think of is the inevitable construction vibrations may be enough to set the bombs off. That and getting rid of the caisson after the bombs were set off.
The idea's based on the old railroad dynamite cars. They were made with heavily reinforced floors and walls but the ceilings had just enough tin to keep the rain out. If the load blew, the blast took the path of least resistance and blew the tin roof sky high leaving the rest of the car intact.
Stupid article (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a really stupid, and over exaggerated article.
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:5, Funny)
Exploding things are cool. Every geek knows that.
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
science to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:3, Funny)
nice reply, but
'SCUBA' wont be used for much of anything
go ahead and use 'Cranes' to lift 1.4 kilotons worth of TNT buried in a rusted out cargo ship in a sandbank underwater in a large river.
What kind of 'Vehicles' are you thinking of? 'Vehicles' is a pretty wide ranging group. Do you plan to use boats, or airplanes, or segways, or what?
As far a
Re:Uh oh....... (Score:3, Insightful)
London Bridge (Score:3, Informative)
Mostly true, except that Lake Havasu City is about a half day drive from Phoenix.
http://www.havasuchamber.com/lbridge.htm [havasuchamber.com]
Re:Question. (Score:5, Informative)
Alternate solution #1 - make the guy who sunk it clean it up.
Alternate solution #2 -Make the guy who started the war clean it up.
There are UXO's [wikipedia.org] from WWI and WWII all over Europe. [bbc.co.uk] From all sides. The get cleaned up as they are found, by whomever finds them. Hopefully cleaned up under control.
Re:Question. (Score:3, Funny)
NOOOOOOOO
Re:Funding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:World War relics (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I have seen the spot where the Montgomery lies buried; ferries between the UK and the Netherlands pass pretty close by. A veteran told me about the wreck and its history, and he pointed out that the houses on the shore would get wiped out if the wreck were to explode.
"What houses?" I wondered. Then I looked real
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also the Trinity test was massivly cool to watch.
Same goes to the explosion of of mt.St. Helens.
I would give a part of my life to witness the santorini explosion or the Tsungaska event.
Or how the Gibraltar Barrier broke and the Mediterrean filled again...
Yes. People died on some of the events. But that doesnt make it any less impressive.
Re:Nukes in my town (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Too bad they are not in Irak (Score:3, Funny)